“I thought I might go on holiday somewhere warm. Rome, perhaps?”

“I hear it’s nice this time of year. And they’re almost entirely free of plague now!”

But just as he was making plans to go, Tyr paid him another visit.

“Quitting again, are you?” said Tyr, walking into Jón’s room while he was getting dressed one morning.

“Good God, man!” Jón shouted, and jumped behind his dressing screen. “You’ve got to stop doing that!”

“You’re missing a golden opportunity,” said Tyr. “Don’t you want to be obscenely wealthy?”

Jón looked around his room, which was draped with silks and expensive furniture. Gold coins overflowed from a chest in the corner. “I am obscenely wealthy!” Jón said.

“You could be the richest man in Iceland, if you weren’t such a quitter.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Jón. “I already managed to sell them sunlight they could’ve had for free—but now that the growing season’s done, they don’t need sunlight at all, free or otherwise!”

“Haven’t you learned anything?” said Tyr. “What they need is irrelevant. They only have to want it.”

“But they don’t want it.”

“Not yet,” said Tyr, “but we can fix that.”

He sidled up to Jón and whispered in his ear. When Tyr had finished, Jón scratched his chin and said, “I don’t know. I think it’s going too far.”

“Try it,” Tyr shrugged. “If they don’t buy it, you’ll know you were right.”

Jón went to see Blood-Axe later that day.

“Jónsson, what are you still doing here?” said Blood-Axe. “I thought you were on your way to Rome!”

“I had a brilliant notion and I just had to share it with you,” said Jón, and he pitched him Tyr’s idea. “Natural sunlight is messy and inefficient. It falls in places where it isn’t wanted, at times it isn’t wanted. Let’s say your family is away on a hunting trip for a week. While you’re gone the sun shines every day, but when you get back it’s all clouds and depressing gray skies. What a waste! But if you were to let me harvest and distribute your sunlight, you would never miss a ray.”

“You want to take the sunlight we already get and sell it back to us?” Blood-Axe said, and the big man broke out laughing. “You’re funny, Jón Jónsson!”

“I can see you’re not quite convinced yet, but hear me out,” said Jón. “Since I won’t have to travel anywhere to make my harvest, I can sell it more cheaply than growing-season sunlight. And there’s another advantage, too: you aren’t limited to buying whatever light would have fallen on your property naturally. Some people won’t want to buy much light, or won’t be able to—which means that others can buy more than their natural share. If you want double-strong sun warming your house every single day of winter, that can be arranged!”

This seemed to pique Blood-Axe’s interest. The farmers, having enjoyed a lucrative harvest season, were flush with money and looking for interesting ways to spend it. He had only one reservation.